Author: Maryland Grows

Weeds are a challenge, even in a raised bed garden

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In the bottom two middle squares of my raised bed garden, the spinach and leaf lettuce is growing from last month, but now it appears like there are some unwanted plants as well — weeds! In just a few short weeks, our garden has been overtaken by weeds. The weed seeds came from the topsoil I purchased. Weeds are a problem when you have a garden of any size, unless you use new, sterile, soilless growing media each season. Knowing what you planted will really be important so you can be on the lookout for the seedlings, and remove just the weeds.

Seedling leaves (cotyledons) often look completely different from the first true leaves that come out later. One characteristic that can help you in figuring out if you have a weed or a plant you want to grow is by looking at the number of leaves that sprout from the seed. If the plant has one seedling leaf, it is called a monocot (monocotyledon). This includes plants like onions, corn, and grasses. If the plant has two seedling leaves at germination, it is called a dicot (dicotyledons) and includes plants like tomatoes, beans, potatoes, spinach, and lettuce. Dicots are sometimes referred to as broadleaf plants. Many times selective herbicides work on either monocots or dicots but not both types of plants; that’s what determines which plant will be killed by the herbicide or which will be resistant. Non-selective herbicides will kill both monocot and dicot plants.

Sometimes people get really upset when I call a plant a “weed.” Please remember that many plants can be designated as weeds. The simple definition is “a plant growing where it is not wanted.” So even though weeds can have desirable characteristics, when it is a plant growing where it is not wanted, it is a weed. Weeds compete for sunshine, water, space, and nutrients in the garden, and some can be hosts for diseases and pests.

As with most gardening tasks, addressing the problem early and often is the best advice. Being able to identify weeds when they are small is one of the skills that I continue to hone each growing season and it takes practice and time. Knowing what you planted and where you planted it is the first step in knowing what may or may not be growing. Virginia Tech has a nice identification guide that lets you answer questions about the specimen and points you to a possible answer.

Left: Grass seedling, an example of a monocot. Right: Ragweed seedling, an example of dicot.

Examples of dicot weeds. Left: Lambsquarter (larger and smaller stages). Right: Smartweed (see the thumbprint in the center of the leaves). 

I will be using mechanical control methods (hand pulling or a small hand shovel to remove the weeds) because it’s such a small area.   

In our commercial high tunnel operation, we use a physical barrier as our first line of defense in weed control. Wind can cause hardships with keeping landscape fabric held in place, but we use 6-8’’ long landscape pins to hold it down.

Here is information on managing weeds organically.

The left photo shows damage as it appeared the morning after the frost. Right: shows what the damage looks like a week later. It hasn’t killed the plants, but they will be set back from the frost. 

We have had some very chilly night temperatures which is not too uncommon here in the mountains. Our expected frost-free date is June 5th, so I’m looking forward to putting in some warm season vegetables in the coming weeks — tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and maybe a summer squash are on our list.

Weeded garden bed

By Ashley Bodkins, Senior Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Garrett County, Maryland, edited by Christa Carignan, Coordinator, Home & Garden Information Center, University of Maryland Extension. See more posts by Ashley and Christa.

A gardener laments lessons hard won

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If only I’d known.  How many times have we slapped our forehead at our gardening follies and mumbled that under our breath.  So today, I am paying homage to the lessons my garden has taught me.  

Soil is god. 

Healthy soil grows healthy plants.  So pay attention to your dirt, um, soil.  Feed it lots of organic matter:  compost, chipped leaves, grass clippings.  And be gentle with it.  Tilling destroys soil structure and harms the soil critters that make soil healthy.

Most bugs are good. 

Only one in ten insects is harmful. The rest are good guys that help control bad bugs.  And another thing.  The uglier the bug, the more beneficial it is.  Look up assassin bugs or cicada killer wasps.  Yikes.  

Assassin bug

Chemicals kill bugs good and bad. 

Most grab-and-go chemicals kill indiscriminately.  Do you really want to take out your allies? I think not. Choose less toxic organic products and do things like hand-picking and crop rotation to keep the bad boys at bay.

Right plant, right place. 

Placing plants where they can not only survive but thrive is smart.  Put a water-loving plant in hot, dry clay and it will die.  Guar-an-teed.  Find out what a plant needs and give it just that for great results.  Don’t tempt fate. 

Plant tags lie. 

Many plant tags have good information, but it goes only so far.  So, do a bit of research online or in a good gardening book to confirm what a plant needs as far as light, moisture, soil and space. 
My beautyberry is 4 feet wider and taller than its tag indicated.  

Respect frost dates. 

Yes, I know.  You want the first tomatoes on the block.  But if you plant them early and they get zapped, you have no tomatoes.  So wait to plant tender seedlings. Mid-May is good. Later is better if your area stays cooler longer.

Always lay garden rakes and pitchforks with the tines away and down. 

Enough said.  

Landscaping fabric is evil. 

Advertised as a weed block, this black devil mesh does nothing but give weeds something to sink their roots into.  Weeds grow both up and down through it.  You will spend half your life wrestling it out of your beds.  

Adopting sickly plants is a bad idea. 

There is a reason they look unwell.  Whether they have been watered too much or too little, baked or chilled, had too much or too little light, or beset by bugs or disease, avoid them.  Smart money is on the healthy plants.  

Impatiens with gray mold

What we do in our garden matters. 

From choosing organic bug controls to making compost, picking drought-tolerant plants to planting flowers for pollinators, every action we take has consequences.  Making earth-friendly choices makes our gardens and communities healthier. 

I hope the lessons my garden has taught me help you to avoid some pitfalls.  In gardening there are oh-so-many ways to get it right.  And wrong.  The fun is in the trying. 

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

May Herbs Herbs Herbs! – The Garden Thyme Podcast

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Listen to episode

In this month episode we are talking about herbs. Now there are too many amazing herbs our there to cover them all in one episode so in this episode we are cover:  what is a herb, three common herbs (basil, chives and thyme) and some of our favorite herbs for the garden.  

We also have our: 

  • Native Plant of the Month (Wild Ginger) at ~ 27:10
  • Bug of the Month (Rose Slug Sawfly) at ~ 31:30
  • Garden Tips of the Month at ~ 36:15

We hope you enjoyed this month’s episode and will tune in next month for more garden tips. 

 If you have any garden-related questions please email us at  UMEGardenPodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcast.

The Garden Thyme Podcast is a monthly podcast where we help you get down and dirty in your garden. The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne’s County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

Theme Song:  By Jason Inc

Apples and strawberries, or how pollinators feed us

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You may have heard that pollinators are suffering and that we need to support them so they can continue to stay around us. You may also have heard that as humans, we need pollinators because if we lose them, we also will lose our ability to feed ourselves. How is this so? In this blog post, I want to take some time to think about the importance of this, visiting two examples of foods very familiar to us: apples and strawberries. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will be sending loving thoughts to pollinators every time you take a bite of these delicious fruits. 😊

Do apple trees need pollinators?

Like for all fruits, apples form after the fertilization of the ovules present in the apple flowers (check out this blog about how this works). If pollination and then fertilization happens, we end up with juicy and large fruits, which enclose the plant’s seeds, and which can be used by the plant to disperse their seeds. For this reason, the fruit we eat will only form if there has been fertilization. Unlike other plants which can use their own pollen to form fruits, apple flowers (but also cherries, apricots, and peaches) cannot do so, and they need to have an organism actively transfer the pollen from one flower to another: a pollinator!

Pollinators of apple trees can be of many types but they are mostly bees. These insects are sometimes managed, with a large series of honeybee or mason bee colonies brought to orchards or gardens to support pollination. Many times, however, it is not the showy presence of these large managed colonies, but the quiet “hidden” activity of a multitude of solitary and wild bees who perform the pollination of these flowers. (Read here to learn about wild bees.) These pollinators are often overlooked, but it is really these little ones that save the day in most gardens.

Apple flowers are pollinated mostly by bees, which can be managed (like honeybees), or wild (like metallic bees or native bumblebees). Photo: Hugo.

Sometimes we don’t realize the value of something until we don’t have it anymore. If you have apple trees in your garden or on your farm, you may have realized that if we have a year with a cold spell when apple trees are flowering, the tree will produce very few apples. This is most times directly related to the need for pollinators that these plants have. In fact, insect pollinators have trouble moving and flying at cold temperatures, which means that if it gets cold when the apple tree flowers, pollinators will not be able to visit the flowers because they cannot reach them. If the spell lasts throughout the whole flowering time, then most of the flowers will not receive any pollen and no fruits will be formed.

Weirdly-shaped strawberries? What’s going on?

The region where I grew up in Argentina is locally known for their delicious strawberries. Every early summer, we would get these small wooden boxes with small, sweet, and incredible strawberries. We would then wash and cut them, and eventually eat them like that or (my favorite) with whipped cream. I never thought at the time that I would today be thankful to all those pollinators for creating such fond memories I can keep forever. How so?

As most plants, strawberries can partially self-pollinate, but get better pollinated if pollinators are around. Like apples, strawberries flower early in the growing season, and a cold spell during their blooming time can make them lose their pollinators, and can lead to irregular strawberries or to no fruits at all. Why is this?

Strawberry flowers are formed by a multitude of mini female organs (shown with the black arrows, on the left), which eventually become a multitude of mini-fruits (shown with the white arrows on the right). Each of these mini-fruits carries one seed and is held by a “base tissue.” The group of all these mini-fruits and the base tissue is what we call a strawberry. Photo: A. Espíndola.

In the case of strawberries, what we consider a fruit is in fact a series of tiny fruits (each little seed we see on a strawberry is one of those fruits) all growing together and in parallel on a “base tissue.” It is this whole “mega-fruit” that we call a strawberry and that we eat. As for apples, strawberries are also particularly well-pollinated by bees, and it has been shown that it is really the wild bees that we need to thank for their services here! Also, like for apples, when pollinators are not around because they are just not able to survive in the area or because they can’t move due to low temperatures, only some of these tiny fruits will get to receive pollen and be fertilized, meaning that only those parts of the “mega-fruit” will get to develop. When this happens, we obtain strawberries that are odd-shaped and that look deformed. These strawberries can still be eaten; they are just not as full and sweet as they could have been if the pollinators had been around.

I want apples and strawberries. What can I do?

We have treated in previous blogs some specific actions you can take in your own green spaces, gardens, and orchards to help pollinators thrive and continue helping us get our own delicious food. And in fact, what better way to thank them for their help in feeding us than to provide food and nesting spaces for them!

By Anahí Espíndola, Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park. See more posts by Anahí.

Anahí also writes an Extension Blog in Spanish! Check it out here, extensionesp.umd.edu, and please share and spread the word to your Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues in Maryland. ¡Bienvenidos a Extensión en Español!

Planting in my new raised bed: potatoes, onions, and more

Maryland Grows5 Comments

Everything is greening up and it is officially my favorite time of the year!

We are planting potatoes, onion sets, spinach seeds, and lettuce seeds in our raised bed this month.   

There have  been a lot of posts on social media in the past few years about re-growing your vegetable scraps. I’ve never done that, and when it comes to potatoes, you should always purchase certified disease-free potato seed for planting in your gardens or containers.

I purchased two 4-pound bags of seed potatoes for $12, which was entirely too many seed potatoes for my small area (8 square feet), but I wanted two varieties and I will be sharing the extras. Below are the steps for cutting potatoes. You can get many “seeds” from one single potato tuber. It’s important that each piece has at least a few eyes/nodes, which will become the plants. Remember that potatoes are a storage organ of the stem, which has growing points called nodes, so that is why you can divide them and they will grow. Carrots, beets, and radishes, on the other hand, are root cells and do not have nodes on them, so you cannot cut them into pieces and expect them to grow into new plants.

Early potatoes should be seeded 3-5” deep, later season potatoes can be 5-7” (so that they won’t be sunburned). More specifics on growing potatoes can be found here. I want small potatoes for roasting with the skins on, so we planted 4 seeds per 1 square foot in the raised bed, with the intention that I will dig them as I need the space in my succession planting plan. Many early seeded vegetables can be harvested at many different stages (early or later, young leaf lettuce or more mature leaves, young baby beets or larger beets, green spring onions or larger ones, for example).

We seeded 9-16 onion sets per square foot with the hope of thinning them out and eating them as spring green onions and leaving a few to grow larger.  

We also added hoops to the raised bed which will support floating row cover to help insulate and protect it from pests, including deer, in the coming weeks. Once it warms up, then I will transition to deer netting over the hoops. 

We used ¾-inch, 10-foot long PVC pipes ($2.29 each), six 1-foot rebar pieces pounded into the ground for anchors, nails with plastic washers, and conduit 2-hole straps. The floating row cover ($15 for 7’ x 100’) is only 7 feet wide, but worked out perfectly with the 10-foot long pipe hoops. It’s always so nice when things work out accidentally! 

In order to make the cover removable to harvest and care for the plants, on the one side we used 4-foot boards connected to the floating row cover with nails that have plastic washers on them. The weight of the boards will hold the fabric in place (the boards are just hanging there).

We rolled the floating row cover and used a 6” landscape fabric staple to hold it in place, which can be easily pulled and replaced whenever access is needed to the bed.  

Hopefully next month we will have some photos to share of the sprouted potatoes, onions, spinach, and lettuce. We also plan to seed some radishes, beets, and turnips in the coming weeks. With the weather warming up, it also will be time to start scouting for insect pests and beneficial critters.

What do you have growing in your garden? Have you harvested anything  in 2021? Happy spring gardening!

By Ashley Bodkins, Senior Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Garrett County, Maryland, edited by Christa Carignan, Coordinator, Home & Garden Information Center, University of Maryland Extension. See more posts by Ashley and Christa.

How to pick the perfect tree

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I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

I love trees.  The wind whispering through a grove of pines.  An oak’s limbs raised to the sky in winter.  The pink pom-poms of a cherry tree in spring.   They are nature’s art.

But you can’t just plunk any old tree anywhere and guarantee grandeur.  It takes some thought and planning.  Make “right plant, right place” your mantra.

First, look at the spot where you want a tree.  Is it sunny or shady?  Wet or windy?  

Do you need a 20-foot tree to tuck under power lines?  Or do you have room for a towering 60-footer?  Break out the measuring tape and see how wide your tree can be, too.  Size matters.

Now, think about what you want.  Do you want an evergreen or deciduous tree?  Does it need to flower?  Deliver show-stopping fall color?  Provide shade?  

Are you screening an undesirable view?  Do you want to support wildlife with a native tree that offers food and shelter?  

At this point, you have a wish list.  You want a small, sun-loving, flowering tree to add a splash of spring color to your front yard and a tall evergreen to screen your neighbor’s garage.  

Southern magnolias add beauty to a landscape but large fallen leaves can be a maintenance issue.
Southern magnolias add beauty to a landscape but large fallen leaves can be a maintenance issue.

Now it’s time to hit the books or websites to find some trees that meet your criteria.  Dirr’s Hardy Tree and Shrubs is a favorite for its brief descriptions and color photos of the whole tree, leaves, flowers, fruit and bark. 

Make sure the trees you pick will survive our winters.  We are in cold hardiness zone 6B, so the zone listing should cover that number.  For example, a tree listed as hardy in zones 4 to 7 would be fine here.

Also note any special needs of the tree.  Kousa dogwood fruit is lovely, but messy as it falls.  So don’t place one by a sidewalk or deck.  Ditto with sweetgum whose spiky sweetgum seedpods are especially hard on bare feet.

Oaks drop acorns so they’re not good by a pool. Crape myrtles hate wind.  Goldenraintree makes billions of seedlings.  Heed the warnings.  

Oaks are a wonderful native choice for landscapes.
Oaks are a wonderful native choice for landscapes.

As you do your research, compile a list of trees that make the cut, then head to a nursery or two.  

Trees come in large containers or balled and burlapped rootballs called B&Bs.  Look for a solid root ball, secure wrapping and roots contained in the burlap in a B&B tree.  

Does the tree have a good overall shape?  Are the leaves or needles deep green?  Eliminate trees with damaged bark, rot or circling roots that can strangle a tree.  

Check the roots of a container plant by asking a staff member to slide it out of the container.  The roots should be light colored and not circling tightly inside the pot. 

Have high standards. If a tree doesn’t pass inspection, pass it by.  A tree is an investment and you want to make it a good one.As you sip lemonade in the dappled shade of a willow oak or enjoying the confetti rain of cherry blossoms, I hope you’ll agree with Joyce Kilmer as she concludes:

Poems are made by fools like me
But only God can make a tree.

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.